by
Aug 03. 2024
Hunter's Chicken & Roast Veg
Recipe: Classic British pub menu item
Serves 2
Preparation time 20 minutes
Cooking time 50 minutes
Ingredients 2 chicken breasts/ 4 bacon slices/ 50g grated cheddar cheese/ 50ml BBQ sauce/ 4 tbsp vegetable oil/ 1 onion, 2 carrots, 2 potatoes and 1 courgette (All vegetables are medium sized or smaller.)
1 Peel the potatoes and carrots and cut them into roughly 3cm pieces. Place the potatoes and then the carrots into an electric rice cooker with 60 ml water and cook on general steam mode for 10 minutes. When it has finished cooking, drain the water. (If you don't have an electric rice cooker you can use a steamer. Steam the potatoes and carrots for about 10 minutes over boiling water.)
2 Preheat the oven to 200°C (fan: 180°C/ gas: 6).
3 Cut the courgette into 3cm lengths and place on a baking tray together with the cooked vegetables. Coat all the vegetables with 3 tbsp oil and spread them out as much as possible so that everything gets crispy when cooked.
4 Oil a baking dish for the chicken. Wrap two slices of bacon around each piece of chicken and place them in the oiled dish.
5 Slice the onion and fry it lightly with a little oil. Place it the baking dish with the chicken.
6 Put the dish and the tray in the oven and cook for about 25 minutes. Check if the meat is cooked thoroughly by cutting it down the middle, it should be white all the way through. Cooking times may vary depending on meat thickness and oven power.
7 Once the chicken is cooked, moisten it by pouring the juices over the top. Drain most of the juice, pour the barbecue sauce over, sprinkle with the grated cheese and return to the oven for about 5 minutes until the cheese has melted.
Chicken breast or boneless thighs are both OK for hunter's chicken. The bacon surface is crispy and the inside of the chicken is tender so the harmony of these textures makes a great dish. Cooking the bacon at a high temperature makes it crispy and delicious and keeps the chicken juicy because the bacon is like a blanket. For the cheese to go on the chicken, cheddar works really well for flavour, or mozzarella for a creamy and chewy texture.
The potatoes and carrots are buttery, and the caramelised onion is sweet and delicious. Fluffy textured potatoes are good for this dish. You can use other vegetables if you like, such as beans or broccoli. Cooking time may need to be adjusted depending on the firmness of the vegetables.
If you want to make the BBQ sauce yourself, see below.
BBQ sauce recipe
Ingredients: 5 tbsp tomato ketchup/ 3 tbsp honey/ 2 tsp mustard powder/ 2 tsp dark brown sugar/ 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar/ 3 tbsp water
Instructions: Mix the ingredients for the sauce and cook in a pan on the hob over a medium heat for about 5- 10 minutes until thickened.
Measuring terminology: tbsp=tablespoon (15ml)/ tsp=teaspoon (5ml)
I thought my chutney was similar to the BBQ sauce flavour so I tried mixing shop-bought BBQ sauce with my chutney in a 1:1 ratio. Eureka! I discovered my talent for cooking late in life. If you made the chutney from my other recipe, please feel free to try it! I guarantee the taste. (please refer to my chutney recipe)
This dish goes well with coffee or wine because of the combination of the acidity and sweetness from the barbecue sauce with the juicy meat. This dish is particularly delicious with dry red wines such as Chianti, Rioja, Shiraz, Pinot Noir or Malbec. People say white meat goes well with white wine and red meat goes well with red wine, but in this case I think the strong taste of the sauce and the bacon wouldn’t go so well with white wine.
The hunter’s chicken recipe is very simple. Even though it is an oven dish, it doesn’t take much time but is delicious. If you don’t prepare the vegetables, the cooking is actually very easy as the oven does everything for you. However I recommend eating it with the vegetables because they are quite delicious. When you put the chicken and vegetables into the oven, if you add some rosemary to both dishes they will have a good aroma. If you want to focus on having even more delicious roast potatoes then you can refer to the BBC roast potatoes recipe.
Hunter's chicken is a classic menu item often found in British pubs. It is a very convenient dish when you have guests because it is easy to cook and guaranteed to succeed. When my other half ate the 'not spicy' dak-bokkeumtang in Korea, it reminded him of hunter’s chicken.
Cooked well dak-bokkeumtang has an umami flavour without being spicy, therefore it has a similar flavour to the melted cheese in hunter’s chicken. It's amazing how tomato flavour can come out in a red pepper paste dish.
The British version of hunter’s chicken is very simple but the versions from other countries are quite different. 'Hunter', the British dish name, 'cacciatore,' the Italian dish name, and 'chasseur', the French dish name, all have the same meaning. This dish originated somewhere in the middle of Italy around the Renaissance period. Italian noblemen who indulged in hunting as a form of entertainment hunted pheasant and foraged wild mushrooms and herbs in the forest. When they returned they handed them all to their cook and therefore the cook called the dish ‘hunter’s chicken’. Tomatoes were added because their acidity softens the meat, and olives and onions were added for a rich flavour. The form of the stew is the same but ingredients such as herbs and olives vary depending on the region, and the recipes also vary. Although cooking styles are similar in each country, their recipes are slightly different, but cooking with bacon seems to be only in the UK.
